Homework
by vnfan
Summary: Mundane homework assignments cause Edward, Bella, and Jacob to reflect on life and death and what it means for each of them. One chapter for each.
1. Chapter 1: Edward

_**Homework, Chapter One: Edward**_

Edward had spent years in high school doing essays just like the one being proposed on the board today: _List 5 things you want to do before you die, and explain why they are important to you._ Just a year ago, he would have written it automatically, even if not exactly truthfully, as he had done many times before. "I want to go to Paris, I want to see the Great Wall of China..." Those assignments had to be kept 'professional,' rather than personal. Writing, "I want to know if I have a soul and if so, am I permanently damned because of all of the people that I've eaten..." would not be wise, even if it was truthful. But now, with Bella in his life, he found himself looking at this assignment in a completely new way.

That night, as he watched Bella sleep, he gave himself over to his imagination, fully indulging in thoughts about what he needed to cram in during these last few weeks of Bella's mortality. What would he miss the most? What should she not miss out on? Eventually, his (honest and unedited) essays came together.

_**What I want to do with Bella before she dies**_

_Before Bella dies, I want to spend as much time as possible committing the scent of her to my memory. I suspect that though she is likely to retain her own, special smell, her scent will change. It is what first drew me to her, for better or worse, and though every breath of it used to be a struggle, now it is my favorite, most cherished scent. There never will be anything like it in this world once I take it from her._

_Second, I want to watch her fall down as much as possible. Again, like the painfully alluring scent of her blood, I suspect that her endearing clumsiness will abate after she is changed. With Bella, it is more than simply seeing her fall (something which endlessly amuses Emmett), it is the whole process that I love. The sudden, startled realization that she is about to fall as it registers on her face, the wildness of her eyes as she prepares to make contact with the ground, then being able to catch her delicate, human body just before she gets hurt. Then watching the blush creep across her cheeks which reflects embarrassment at her clumsiness, shyness at being caught in my arms, and pleasure at our proximity. I will miss all of that tremendously._

_Blushing Bella. Ah, the pooling of warm, sweet blood across her pale cheeks. At the start, it was simply a temptation, like flashing a gourmet meal in front of a starving man. But after knowing her, I am aware that her blushes have so many varied meanings, from embarrassment and shyness to pleasure, rage, or passion. I honestly cannot imagine her without it, and hope against hope that somehow she will retain her ability to blush after her death. A fool's hope._

_I want to bask in her warmth before she becomes cold like I am. I want to feel her blood warmed hands on my cheeks and in my hair, to feel her warm body pressed against mine, to run my lips along the veins in her neck and arms. Then, as I take her life, to drink just a bit of her sweet, sweet blood and revel in what I've kept myself from for so long..._

At that point, Edward stopped because he simply couldn't bring himself to think, once again, about what he would be taking from her when he took her life. He was selfish. He had become reconciled to that. There was no going back now, and guilt would only make things worse. Perhaps a list of things he, they, could finally do after she died would be comforting...

_**5 Things I Want To Do Before I Die** (The assumption being that both Bella and I are already dead, but still 'alive')_

_1. Make love to Bella. No explanation needed._ When he could finally hold her, kiss her, love her like he needed and wanted to with no boundaries, no restraint... Best not to think about it too much now...

_2. Teach Bella to run._ In his opinion, Bella was already the most beautiful woman in the world, but he knew that once she had changed, she would be flawless and powerful and the combination of her grace, beauty and strength would be a combination so powerful that he would be utterly undone. He relished the thought.

_3. Travel._ He knew her well enough now to guess that her reluctance to accept gifts would follow her into her death. But she could never turn down travel, and if he refused to do anything but travel as first class as possible, he knew that her desire to see and experience the world would win out over her reluctance to spend money.

_4. Read._ Other than freeing one to hours of other activities, being able to forgo sleep was very conducive to reading. He loved that she was a bookworm, too, and looked forward to simple days and nights together where they could read, listen to music, love each other and just be.

_5. Make love to Bella. No explanation needed._

Altogether a very satisfactory list, for himself at least. A more mundane and predictable list was needed for his assignment. With that thought, Edward slipped out of the rocking chair and into bed with Bella to hold her warm, delicate, scented body until she awoke.

End Part One

A/N: Part two will be Bella's thoughts and part three Jacob's.


	2. Chapter 2: Bella

_Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended._

**Homework Chapter 2: Bella**

Bella awoke slowly, gradually becoming aware of her surroundings. Edward's cold arms held her close, his lips skimming her neck and his cold breath drifting across the sensitive skin just under her jaw. The sound of gentle, steady rain made her smile – Edward would be with her at school today.

"Good morning love," he whispered as Bella rolled onto her back to look at him. They kissed softly, lingering in bed for the few private moments left before school. The sound of Charlie exiting the bathroom was Bella's cue to have her human moment and Edward's to run home and change.

As she started to blow dry her hair, Bella's thoughts drifted to her English assignment. This essay felt both urgent and irrelevant to her – _what would she like to do before she died?_ What death was exactly would soon be a state of mind for her rather than an issue of scientific exactitude. She was sure that a mundane list like the one her teacher expected was slightly beyond her at the moment, since the issue of her 'death' was imminent rather than a matter of hypothetical consideration. As eager as she was to be 'given immortality' as Aro had romantically phrased it, her list of things she would like to do before she was changed – she still couldn't think of it as dying – continued to grow and the things that filled the list seemed alternately trivial and momentous.

The timing of this assignment was nothing short of ominous. She supposed that it was the sort of thing that was a typical senior year of high school English assignment. "New beginnings, future wide open, everything before us..." graduation speech sort of thinking. She had once looked up definitions of death while Edward had been away on a hunting trip, simply to see how others had defined what she was both facing and escaping. She was curious to see how well what she was about to become fit or defied the definitions. If death was, in short, "the opposite of being alive; the action or fact of dying or being killed," she could not accept that that definition would apply to her, though she knew Edward would disagree. But when she found the next definition, "the permanent ending of vital processes in a cell or tissue," she knew that this was indeed what lay ahead.

She was working through the obvious things that would make the list of what she'd be giving up: not having children; being permanently separated from Renee and Charlie; distance from Jacob and possibly becoming enemies with the Quileutes... These were things that were not easily reconciled to, but her parents would eventually die, Jacob could imprint, not all couples had children, and if she had to she knew she would always chose loyalty to the Cullens first... there was something natural, even if extremely difficult to work through, in these issues. Perhaps it was a quirk of her mind, being on AM while the rest of the world was on FM, but all of the difficult things were easy to accept knowing that the payoff was Edward. It wasn't a lack of free will, not that once she had met Edward she had never had a choice, but simply a deep knowing that what she truly needed, more than air, more than food, more than life, was Edward. She had never needed to make a choice. She had simply _known_.

Bella walked into the kitchen for her breakfast as her stomach rumbled and she realized that _this_ is what she would miss – the normal, everyday things that made up her routines. She loved food, and enjoyed cooking. There was something comforting in chopping, sauteeing, mixing... and although eating could be a purely utililitarian thing, it could also be an extreme pleasure. So the first thing on her list of things to do would be to eat as many different sorts of things as she could before... _before_. She smiled slightly as she determined not to mention this particular part of her list to any of the Cullens. She could only imagine what a vampire coven's ideas of good human food combined with the Cullens' extreme wealth would result in: exotic foods flown in from every part of the country, or quite possibly the globe, and the whole family gathered to watch her eat it all like some bizzare circus side show. Food... it was trivial to think of as part of her five most deep human desires, but it reminded of the sharp contrast in the ways that her horizons would be both immeasurably broadened and sharply limited after her change.

She knew what Alice and Rosalie had planned for one of her last human experiences: time permitted, she would be heading off for a day at a salon. After her change, she would be frozen in time as she was, and Alice especially insisted that Bella have one last haircut and manicure (the manicure would be her first, actually, but she wouldn't quibble) before she became _as is_, forever. As little as she looked forward to it, she sensed that this was a small window into whatever slight insecurity remained in Alice. Alice managed to make her unusual short hair work, but sometimes Bella thought that now that Alice knew why her hair had been left so short as a human and therefore a permanent feature in her vampire eternity, that it disturbed her. If it made Alice happy to arrange it for Bella, then she would comply.

Yawning as she put on her shoes, Bella thought about sleep. She had truly loved to sleep before her last birthday. The dreams that had become her near constant nightly companion since that time, though, made sleep one thing she was honestly glad to be finished with. Edward assured her that she would miss it in time, and acknowledged that as much as he would be glad to have endless hours with her, he would miss watching her sleep. Bella, though, was relieved when she thought about no more sleep talking. Yes, it had been a blessing – Edward might never have stayed a full night in the beginning, if her restless murmurs had not been the one way that he had finally been able to get inside of her head just a little bit. But the idea of not being able to stop herself from saying potentially embarrassing, or even hurtful, things was deeply mortifying. The only benefit of sleep was drifting away and waking up in Edward's arms. _Nothing_ felt as perfect as that.

Well, almost nothing. Bella felt her cheeks redden as she thought yet again about the one thing that made the top of any list she could ever write about what she wanted to do before she died. It was also, of course, at the top of her list of things she wanted to after, as well. The need, the ache she felt to be with Edward overpowered every rational thought she had. Sometimes she felt like some crazed, hormonal freak when she compared her raging desire to be with Edward to his cool composure. He might _want_ to be with her, but he didn't seem to _need_ to be. If she were honest with herself, it left her slightly off balance. If he weren't so irrationally overjoyed at the idea of marriage, she might again be plagued with uncertainty about whether he really did want her forever. She wondered sometimes: did he really not feel this desire, or was he simply too afraid to desire it? She knew that if he said he was afraid of hurting her, that he meant it. She also knew that if he had more specific information on how or why he could hurt her (good heavens, if he had discussed it with Emmett, he surely had far more information on the subject than anyone could possibly need), he was too much of a gentleman to discuss the details with her.

As she locked the door behind her and slipped into Edward's car, she thought back on some of their less restrained, more passionate kisses and touches. To the fateful night they had met James and Victoria. She remembered the way he had pressed her against Emmett's Jeep and breathed her in, kissing her neck and face the very first time that she had begun to see how much it cost him in anguish to be with her ("I infuriate myself," he said gently. "The way I can't seem to keep from putting you in danger. My very existence puts you at risk. Sometimes I truly hate myself. I should be stronger, I should be able to —"). No, Edward did want her and he wanted her as much as she did him, but his self control would remain to keep her safe. He had good reason for it, she thought as she looked at him again, dazzled by his beauty. After all, he had to have enough self control for both of them.

Edward lifted their clasped hands to kiss her wrist before he locked eyes with her and ran the back of his hand across her cheek. No, truly there was no need for a list of things that she needed to do first. She was ready at any time. It was _Edward_ that she wanted, that she needed. He was enough; no food or relative or experience would ever take precedence to just being with him. She was ready as soon as Edward was. She suddenly felt that she had been ready since before she knew that there had been anything to prepare for.


End file.
